Physics Commons^™

A Torsion-Based Rheometer For Measuring Viscoelastic Material Properties, Merrill E. Asp, Elise Jutzeler, Jakub Kochanowski, Katherine Kerr, Dawei Song, Sarthak Gupta, Robert Carroll, Alison E. Patteson

Physics - All Scholarship

Rheology and the study of viscoelastic materials are an integral

part of engineering and the study of biophysical systems. Tissue rheology is even

used in the study of cancer and other diseases. However, the cost of a rheometer is

feasible only for colleges, universities, and research laboratories. Even if a rheometer

can be purchased, it is bulky and delicately calibrated, limiting its usefulness to the

laboratory itself. The design presented here is less than a tenth of the cost of a

professional rheometer. The design is also portable, making it the ideal solution to

introduce viscoelasticity to high school students …

Morphology And Mechanics Of The Actin Cytoskeleton, David Aaron Quint

Physics - Dissertations

Contained in this thesis is the quest to model the growth, form and mechanics of part of the cellular cytoskeleton known as the lamellipodium. The cellular cytoskeleton is made of filamentous proteins, such as F-actin, and provides for structural support for the cell. Lamellipodia are extensions of the cellular cytoskeleton at the leading edge of a crawling cell generated so that the cell can extend, and thereby move in a particular direction. In the first two chapters, we focus on morphological characteristics of lamellipodia formation, which is, in part, shaped by branched filament nucleation via the branching protein Arp2/3. For …